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The article says: "Public international law (or international public law) concerns the treaty relationships between the nations and persons which are considered the subjects of international law, including sovereign nations, the legal status of the Holy See, international organizations (including especially supranational organizations such as the United Nations), and in some cases, movements of national liberation (wars of national liberation) and armed insurrectional movements (see insurgency).

All of the text in italics requires a reliable source. Is the Holy See not a sovereign nation? Aside from the Geneva Conventions is there any applicable international law for "movements of national liberation (wars of national liberation) and armed insurrectional movements (see insurgency)."

Restore if you can provide the citations. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.202.48.48 (talk) 06:55, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Starting proper talk page for International law. There seems to have been some confusion about what this page is meant to be, and I take the blame, because when I moved the page titles half a year ago, I must not have moved the talk page. International law can mean a few things - the one that everyone is familiar with is technically "public international law". All additions on that topic should go there. Wikidea 23:52, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

The European Union is the first and only example of a supra-national legal framework, where sovereign nations have pooled their authority through a system of courts and political institutions.

I don't know much about the EU, but how is it fundamentally different than the United States? 2nd Piston Honda (talk) 14:42, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

I suppose the main thing is that the US is a nation state. It has a federal government, and authority derives from the Constitution. In the EU, authority derives from the member states. They can opt out if they want. Wikidea 01:18, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

In practical terms it is very different as well. From the outside, the US is a single country with a single foreign policy, a single currency, no internal border restrictions etc. The EU does not (fully) have any of these things. The statement in the article is quite a big one though, and should certainly be referenced. Art Markham (talk) 23:18, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Hi, US are a federal state and the EU is a Sui Generis international organation.The EU is as a model of states integration has been pushed so far but never reached the level of federal state.--Rezak001 (talk) 09:22, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

International law is not just about organizations, institutionalized groups of individuals, but about the liability of international legal entities. Law is about failures in responsabilities that are the cause of liabilities due an individual entity or a group entity.

There should be the addition of a section that documents the transition from the language of "law of nations" to international legalism. The former existed following the Congress of Vienna while the later only developed when the work of Jeremy Bentham, in his work on perpetual peace, was released . To say that "international law" or legalism existed much before the 1840s (particularly as a common term) is an anachronism. The actual discussion of law as existing in an "inter-national" capacity did not truly take hold until well after the liberal revolts of 1848 even. The issue is one of universal law (international) and arbitrated common laws (i.e. the law of individual nations being used by the governing jurisdiction. This is a substantive historical distinction. And one that might further be connected to the very rise of "liberal internationalism" which is greatly dependent on the idea of universal law (i.e. universal human rights, universal trade rights, universal access to sea ways) for its world view.

for more see M. W. Janis, Jeremy Bentham and the Fashioning of "International Law", The American Journal of International Law, Vol. 78, No. 2 (Apr., 1984), pp. 405-418. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.26.2.252 (talk) 15:45, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

I know this is already graded as "start-up class." I'm sorry to say that it is terribly inadequate. Much of it is simply confused. It is worse than nothing. Unfortunately, I do not have time to rewrite it now. Whoever is working on it should be able to find somebody who knows the subject better, though. I have taught International Law for 40 years, and if possible I will get back to it in the future. Eleanor1944 (talk) 03:24, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

A key term is the category of so-called Acta Jure Imperii, which designate sovereign acts, which can include even war atrocities, but states cannot be held liable for due to international law practice (though there are some indications that this practice might change at some point).

The text of the has some interesting theoretical passages and offer some insights into international law practice.

Here some passages:

"56. Although there has been much debate regarding the origins of State immunity and the identification of the principles underlying that immunity in the past, the International Law Commission concluded in 1980 that the rule of State immunity had been “adopted as a general rule of customary international law solidly rooted in the current practice of States” (Yearbook of the International Law Commission, 1980, Vol. II (2), p. 147, para. 26). That conclusion was based upon an extensive survey of State practice and, in the opinion of the Court, is confirmed by the record of national legislation, judicial decisions, assertions of a right to immunity and the comments of States on what became the United Nations Convention. That practice shows that, whether in claiming immunity for themselves or according it to others, States generally proceed on the basis that there is a right to immunity under international law, together with a corresponding obligation on the part of other States to respect and give effect to that immunity.

57. The Court considers that the rule of State immunity occupies an important place in international law and international relations. It derives from the principle of sovereign equality of States, which, as Article 2, paragraph 1, of the Charter of the United Nations makes clear, is one of the fundamental principles of the international legal order. This principle has to be viewed together with the principle that each State possesses sovereignty over its own territory and that there flows from that sovereignty the jurisdiction of the State over events and persons within that territory. Exceptions to the immunity of the State represent a departure from the principle of sovereign equality. Immunity may represent a departure from the principle of territorial sovereignty and the jurisdiction which flows from it."

This is meant as background material for some wikipedians, also with the incident maybe to include the cited term... Green Future (talk) 00:25, 12 September 2012 (UTC)